I'm excited about this episode because I'm going to do something a little bit different and I'm going to talk about six ways that graduate school, in particular, has made me a better freelancer or a better freelance writer. I decided to do this particular episode because there are a lot of people that I know in graduate school - and there's just a lot of people in graduate school in general - who could really benefit from thinking about developing a freelance career as an editor or writer or honestly as anything else that they are passionate about. And all too often, these opportunities are never presented to people in that scenario.

Laura is back for an episode that goes into the complementary services that you can add on to your menu of services either at the beginning of your freelance journey or as you take your company and writing skills to the next level.

In this solo episode, we are tackling the feast or famine cycle almost every freelancer is familiar with. It doesn’t matter what you do in the freelance world – whether you’re a virtual assistant or a writer – it can be hard to view the slow seasons positively today, Laura talks about how these down times are the perfect opportunity to up your game and prepare for the busy season (which will come!) or even to get all the pieces of a big marketing push together so that you are ready to take advantage of the upward swing when it happens.

Having just reviewed over 200 freelance writing applications for a client project I am managing, it was shocking to see the kinds of mistakes freelancers were making in the pitching process that was costing them the opportunity to land a new client.

When you write and submit a proposal to a new client, you could be the only person who's sending them an email, or one of many others. Either way, you really need to stand out from the crowd and avoid these freelance pitching mistakes.

As we transition out of the summer and into the fall, I think now is the perfect time to talk about successfully riding the feast or famine cycle freelancers typically experience at different points in the year and which marketing strategies are still the most effective for those in the industry. One of those is Upwork. In this episode, I discuss my thoughts on whether the online job site is still worth it going into 2018.